Born in Iasi, Romania, Marinca has won a variety of awards in her career, including the British Academy Television Award for Best Actress for her screen debut in Channel 4's Sex Traffic. She also won several awards for 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days. In 2008 she was presented the Shooting Stars Award by the European Film Promotion at the 58th Berlin International Film Festival.

Working his way up the ranks in the BBC, Jeremy Silberston became a Production Manager in 1982 and worked on a number of shows as well as Doctor Who, including Smiley's People, Lovejoy and Bergerac. As a director he worked on shows like The House of Elliott, Coasting and The Bill

A good friend of Anthony Horowitz, the two of them developed both Midsomer Murders and Foyle's War, with Silberston directing a number of their episodes.

In the late 1970s, he starred as Inspector Roderick Alleyn in four adaptations of the mystery novels of Ngaio Marsh with New Zealand settings, in a production for New Zealand television. From 1988 to 2000, he played Inspector Reg Wexford in numerous television adaptations of mysteries by Ruth Rendell and this is probably the role for which he became best known. In 1993, following the death of his second wife, he married the actress Louie Ramsay, who played Mrs Wexford in the same television series.

John Scott Martin was an English actor born in Toxteth, Liverpool. He was a Dalek operator in over 50 episodes of the classic series of Doctor Who.

Martin operated Daleks from 1965's The Chase through to 1988's Remembrance of the Daleks. He worked with eight different actors in the title role of Doctor Who from William Hartnell to Sylvester McCoy, and also Richard Hurndall, who took on the role of the First Doctor in The Five Doctors.

He also operated other Doctor Who monster costumes including the insectoid Zarbi in The Web Planet, and the robotic Mechanoids in The Chase. In the episode Robot Martin made his first on screen appearance, he appeared as a guard in the first episode. Martin also had a cameo in the BBC series The Tripods.

Some of his other television appearances include I, Claudius, Z-Cars, Quatermass and the Pit, Softly, Softly and the comedy Mine All Mine, written by Russell T Davies.

His film credits include a dancing instructor in a brief scene in Alan Parker's film of Pink Floyd's The Wall, and small roles in Ali G Indahouse, Little Shop of Horrors and the Monty Python films Erik the Viking and The Meaning of Life.

He appeared on the West End stage in shows like Kismet, Oliver! and The Streets of London. In the Manchester Opera House production of Fiddler on the Roof featuring Topol in the starring role, he played the Rabbi.

Martin also appeared in the music video for the Catatonia single "Dead from the Waist Down". His daughter, Catriona Martin is also an actress.

Sydney Cecil Newman was born in Toronto to a Russian Jewish immigrant father. His interest in art and the movies led him to attempt a career designing film posters, before switching to working in the film industry itself. A trip to Hollywood in 1938 led to an offer from the Walt Disney Company, a role he was unable to take up because of work permit issues. He returned to his native country, and during the Second World War he he joined the National Film Board of Canada, first as an editor and later as a producer. He produced many documentaries and propaganda films during the war, and continued to work for the NFB in the post-war era. By 1952 he had produced some 300 short films, many of which were for Canada's government.

His excellence in the field led to him being appointed Supervising Director of Features, Documentaries, and Outside Broadcasts for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) in 1952, where he was involved in producing some of the earliest outside broadcasts on Canadian television, including early episodes of the iconic Hockey Night in Canada and the first Canadian Football League game to be shown on television. Despite having limited experience in drama, he was made Supervisor of Drama Production in 1954, and he used the role to encourage young writers and directors, including William Kotcheff and Arthur Hailey.

Among his productions for CBC was the highly successful Canadian Television Theatre presentations, and his work was being increasingly admired at home and abroad, including in Britain where several of his CBC productions were screened by the BBC. In an interview he explained that it was during a visit to the UK that he realised the kind of drama he wanted to produce when seeing John Osborne's play Look Back In Anger with then Head of BBC TV Drama Michael Barry. However, it was to be Howard Thomas - managing director of one of the new ITV network franchise holders, Associated British Corporation (ABC) - who decided Newman could provide him with the type of contemporary drama he wanted to broadcast, and recruited him to ABC in 1958.

Becoming Head of Drama at ABC, Newman took over the production of the popular Armchair Theatre anthology play series, networked nationally on Sunday evenings to huge audiences and which he insisted should use only original material that had been penned for television. He commissioned plays for the series by writers such asAlun Owen, Harold Pinter, and Clive Exton. Newman also devised a thriller series called Police Surgeon, starring Ian Hendry. Although not a success, Newman used elements from the series, including its star, to create The Avengers, a programme that would go on to achieve international success

While at ABC, he also produced the children's science-fiction serial Target Luna and its three spin-offs - Pathfinders In Space, then Pathfinders To Mars, and finallyPathfinders To Venus. The four series, comprising 27 episodes, were written by Malcolm Hulke and Eric Paice and centred on the space exploits of the Wedgwood family. Actors who appeared in the different series included Michael Craze, Bernard Horsfall, Gerald Flood, and George Coulouris. The shows aired between April 1960 and April 1961, with the last series being the most ambitious and whose complexity and need to keep videotape editing to a minimum saw the decision made to have live action performed in the electronic studio and visual effects done on film. During the summer of 1961, a sci-fi version of Armchair Theatre was proposed by story editor Irene Shubik, and between June and September 1962 the resulting anthology series Out Of This World was shown, consisting of 13 one-hour dramas, with an extra introductory one - entitled Dumb Martian, produced by Newman - shown in the Armchair Theatre slot six days before Out Of This World started.

Arrival at the BBC

Newman's success at ITV led to him being head-hunted by the BBC, and in 1961 he was offered the role of Head of Drama by the Corporation's Director of Television,Kenneth Adam. Although he accepted the position, he was forced by ABC to fulfil his contract, finally leaving the commercial network to take up his new appointment in December 1962. In a later interview he stated:

I'll be perfectly frank. When I got to the BBC and I looked my staff over I was really quite sick, because most of the directors there were people whose work I just did not like. I thought it was soft and slow and had no edge. Believe me, I had a bad Christmas, because I didn't know what to do - how to change those people who were stuck in their old ways, many of them having done their first television work at Alexandra Palace in 1938! Nice guys, willing guys, but most of them were just rigid!

He would spend five years with the BBC, but the influence of his tenure would ripple throughout the decades. While at the Corporation, he would oversee the arrival of new anthology series The Wednesday Play - a BBC equivalent of Armchair Theatre. He employed the likes of Dennis Potter, Jeremy Sandford, and Ken Loach, and under his watch seminal plays such as Cathy Come Home and Up the Junction were produced, tackling serious social issues of the day. Series produced under his aegis included the fantastical, Verity Lambert-produced Adam Adamant Lives!, the first two series of sci-fi anthology drama Out Of The Unknown (both produced by Shubik - now also working at the BBC), and legendary costume drama The Forsyte Saga - which became one of the most acclaimed and popular productions of his era, watched by 100 million people in 26 countries. But it is for Doctor Who, now approaching its fiftieth anniversary, for which he remains best-known.

In 1988, she was cast in the popular BBC soap opera EastEnders, where she played Mo Butcher, the battleaxe mother of Mike Reid's character, Frank Butcher. During her time in the show, she once again received wide acclaim for her portrayal of an elderly lady's descent into Alzheimer's disease. The story about the effect that Alzheimer's has on the sufferer's family had to be curtailed when Doré decided to leave the programme in 1990. The character was killed off at the end of 1992.[5]

Born in 1918, Michael Peake appeared in a large number of films and television shows during the 1950s and 60s. He featured in many small roles in shows such as The Avengers, The Saint and Z Cars, as well as narrating TV show ‘The Ambermere Treasure’ and starring in eight episodes of ITV’s ‘Richard The Lionheart’ in 1962, most notably playing the role of Conrad of Monferrat.

In 1965, Peake made his only appearance in Doctor Who, featuring in The Romans as Tavius, a Christian who, with the aid of Maximus Pettulian, aimed to murder Emperor Nero, at the same time assisting Ian and Barbara in their bid to escape from Nero’s palace.